Penn Highlands Healthcare
The Challenge
Ten years ago, Penn Highlands' extensive growth plans created concerns with transparency, trust, and scalability. Although the health system had extensive data moving into its 340B ecosystem, technology resources were unavailable to provide split billing functionality correctly or effectively. Because other marketplace vendors did not support a combined WAC, GPO, and 340B billing solution, it became nearly impossible for Penn Highlands to capture a correct NDC — with three or four different manufacturers often available for the same product on a shelf.
Penn Highlands' referral capture program (Claims Guard) generated significant revenue and required a robust solution without downtime or time-consuming audits. Initially, Penn Highlands was only achieving $8 to $10 million savings a year with its existing solution, and supplementing this revenue loss became a top leadership priority. Intricately crossing tax IDs to capture multi-facility transactions for the health system's 400 physicians became critical.
The Solution
Penn Highlands implemented Omnicell 340B to address these challenges due to the solution's flexibility and ability to eliminate existing manual processes. In an effort to bypass manufacturer 340B discount restrictions on contract pharmacies, Penn Highlands also purchased multiple independent contract pharmacies and transitioned them to entity-owned facilities. By capitalizing on Omnicell's cohesive management structure to ease the data integration, they were able to implement the solution at five hospitals.
The Impact
Operational efficiency increased significantly with Omnicell 340B, but intangibles like trust, transparency, and scalability immensely supplemented Penn Highlands' quantitative metrics. The hospital realized $40 million in OrderLink savings by the end of the 2023 fiscal year and another $22 million in contract pharmacy savings — a total of $62 million in net savings that has helped the health system recoup a significant part of their revenue loss to fund capital equipment and specialty care centers for the community.
"The revenue from our 340B processes have allowed us to operate a free clinic and have a discount cash prescription program for uninsured/underinsured patients at our pharmacies," said Eric Iorfido, Director of 340B at Penn Highlands Healthcare. Penn Highlands is excited to expand its partnership with Omnicell through whole system cabinet integration, automation of medication management with end-to-end inventory visibility, and specialty pharmacy services offerings.
Visit Omnicell.com/340B to learn more today.